CES 2014: What we saw, what we loved, and what we’ll remember

Wearables, cars, Linux, Android, games, and the people behind the craziness.

Android mobile—like, really mobile

I feel like I should write something about Android, but there was very little of note to be seen this year. CES has always been the land of televisions, laptops, and smart home vaporware; it's not a place where any company's mobile division really goes crazy with new stuff. Samsung showed off its line of "Pro" tablets, but they aren't terribly different from existing hardware like the Note 10.1. The smartphone-focused Mobile World Congress is next month, and that's where most of this year's early smartphone news will be made until Samsung starts with the Galaxy S5 hype train in Q2. The most important announcement was probably Google's Open Automotive Alliance, a project that will bring Android-powered car computers to market at some point in the distant future. It was only an announcement, though. No one had anything to show off.

Further Reading

Speaking of cars, CES could have changed its name to the "Car Electronics Show" this year and nothing would have seemed out of place. Almost every major automaker showed up to the event, and even companies that don't make cars had some kind of accessory-filled cyborg car on display. BMW brought a whole fleet of i3 electric cars, which could be seen zooming all over the road outside the convention center, stuffed full of journalists. Toyota flew in a bunch of its futuristic concepts to the show, like the flexible-OLED-wrapped FV2 concept, and it even showed off a hydrogen fuel-cell car that it actually intends to bring to market.

The car industry has finally woken up to the smartphone revolution, and this year it seems like all the manufacturers have decided they want to somehow merge the smartphone with the car infotainment system. Can a bunch of software newbies really make a good car computer? Can they make a "smart" car without it being extremely distracting to the driver? Does anyone actually want to use their in-dash computer when they have a newer, faster, more capable cell phone in their pocket?

—Ron Amadeo

Promises, promises

A lot of the same messages from last year's CES seem to have carried over to this year. Wearables were a common topic, as so many of 2013's wearables failed to actually deliver on the experiences they had promised. The "Internet of things" still doesn't have very many things.

This year, though, the promises feel so much more tangible. Qualcomm showed off the benefits of its "Internet of things" vision with its Connected Home demonstration, which was centered on AllJoyn-enabled products. Qualcomm says the devices in the demo are nearly ready to take their place in our homes, where they'll be controlling and streaming music to and from each other or sending and receiving intelligent notifications—or any number of other neat tasks.

As Sean and Ron said above, automotive applications for mobile technology were everywhere. From Nvidia's press conference to the Parrot booth, "infotainment" was front and center. Intelligent autonomous vehicles, driver safety systems, rear-seat entertainment, phone-to-car interactions—all were on display and headed into production.

Promises are only as good as their delivery, though. Last year, CES left me feeling deflated and unenthused. Now, though, I'm almost ready to believe that this is going to be a very cool year.

—Jason Inofuentes

Fit is in

Further Reading

Someone usually decides each year of CES is The Year of The [your favorite trendy gadget here]. This year was, unequivocally, the year of the wristlet-fitness-bracelet-(fitlet?)-slash-smartwatch. I almost feel sympathy for all of the people who picked up smart bracelets or fitness bands in 2013 because for all the money they cost, they are apparently not that difficult to make. Even many of the big brands (LG, Toshiba) whose main focus doesn't necessarily have anything to do with fitness were tossing wristlets out on the floor to see how we liked 'em.

The models I saw tended to be Fitbit- or Fuelband-imitation types, sometimes with a watch interface built in as opposed to something more smartwatch-like à la the Galaxy Gear or Pebble. Darned if every company doesn't want to give you a networked pedometer on your wrist.

Enlarge/ Toshiba's fitness bracelet. This one has a slightly more advanced display than average.

Their sheer ubiquity suggests that, pretty soon, networked bracelets are going to be a fairly cheap commodity—great news for anyone who is motivated to track their fitness but has balked at the $100-plus price tags of 2013’s models. However, I suspect there will still be a decently sized gap between devices that simply track movement and devices that are able to organize and present that information well, the way the 2013 crop did. Quality, rather than price, will become the thing to pay attention to.

—Casey Johnston

Meets, greets, and the stories behind the curtain

Further Reading

Ars revisits a company that became one of our biggest stories last year.

I could list the companies I met with and the neat stuff I saw—standouts would be TrackingPoint's new Precision Guided Firearm and Pirate3D's Buccaneer 3D printer—but they weren't the best things I got out of this year's CES. Far more valuable than all the product introductions and vendor interviews were the small snatches of time we got to spend with other members of the tech press. A chance hallway meeting with Wired led directly to Casey Johnston guest-starring in a Gingercast, which led to us all standing around laughing, which led to another chance meeting with re/code's Walt Mossberg—who told us that he's a big Ars Technica fan.

The memories I have from CES 2014 aren't really focused on gadgets so much as they are on the people in between the gadgets. Andrew, Casey, and I had planned on hooking up with Norm Chan and Will Smith from Tested during the Sunday night pre-show PEPCOM event, but Smith's PEPCOM registration was nowhere to be found, and we ended up having to talk outside the convention center because they wouldn't let him in. This was legitimately hilarious.

Enlarge/ A cell phone camera pic of most of the Ars CES crew at Benihana, preparing to get our drink on and see the onion-stack volcano.

Lee Hutchinson

CES is ultimately just a trade show, and it can be as fascinating and fun as you make it. We saw a lot of stuff, but the event itself was just a framework. Intel had its fancy keynote, Michael Bay stormed off stage, and Valve announced a bunch of Steam Machines, but putting the spectacle aside and catching up with the faces behind the Twitter avatars is more valuable than all the gadgets in the whole wide world.